Every now & then, Olivier & I go running amok in Paris because of the fact that there is so much to see & do here.
Most of the time, the crowds, the long lines & general presence of the humans all get on my nerves. But there is one place here in the city that I enjoy not only for its beauty, but because the majority of people that are there can’t bother me because for one, I have such a deep respect for them…& for another, because they’re dead.
That place is a famous cemetery called Père Lachaise.
While wandering among the graves here, you’re bound to recognize a few names. Like the French poet, Gérard de Nerval…
“The first moments of sleep are an image of death; a hazy torpor grips our thoughts and it becomes impossible for us to determine the exact instant when the ”I,” under another form, continues the task of existence.” – Gérard de Nerval
Not far away rests the French novelist Honoré de Balzac…
“Death unites as well as separates; it silences all paltry feeling.” – Honoré de Balzac
Continue walking…
you can’t miss Oscar Wilde while you’re here.
“My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.” – Oscar Wilde, his last words
But what do many people come to Père Lachaise for? 
Well, of course, it’s to see The Lizard King.
Death makes angels of us all
& gives us wings
where we had shoulders
smooth as raven’s
claws
– Jim Morrison, An American Prayer [tags]Père Lachaise, Paris, Dead, Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, cemetery, Balzac[/tags]